Review and approval of
the recommended priority improvements to the primary road system to be
provided to VDOT and CTB at an upcoming Public Hearing on the VDOT Six
Year Primary Plan.

STAFF CONTACT(S):

Messrs., Tucker,
Foley, Graham, Cilimberg, Benish, Wade

LEGAL REVIEW:Yes

AGENDA DATE:

September 7, 2005

ACTION:INFORMATION:

CONSENT AGENDA:

ACTION:X
INFORMATION:

ATTACHMENTS:Yes

REVIEWED BY:

BACKGROUND:

Albemarle
County has the
opportunity to provide VDOT with the County’s priorities for improvements to
the primary road system at an annual public hearing on the Six Year
Interstate, Primary and Urban System Plan. Primary roads are those roads with
route numbers below 600, including interstate highways (Route 6, 20, 22, 29,
231, 240, 250 and I-64), The County has maintained a priority list of
improvements for a number of years, and uses this list as the basis for each
year’s update. As of the date this report was written, VDOT had not set a date
for the public hearing but staff has been informed by VDOT that the hearing
will likely take place in late September or October. Last year’s tele-conference
public hearing was held on September 29th.

STRATEGIC PLAN:

3.1 Make the County a Safe
and Healthy Community in which citizens feel secure to live, work and play.

DISCUSSION:

Staff has proposed several
changes to this year’s requested priority list, which can be found as
Attachment A. The proposed deletions are identified with a strikethrough and
additions are in italics and bold. The major changes proposed
include:

Meadow Creek Parkway
Phase I –
An acknowledgement of the recent infusion of $27,000,000 for the construction
of the interchange has been included.

Crozet-
Staff added more specific recommendations from the Crozet Master Plan for
improvement which would improve Route 240. The previous priority list only
made a general reference that improvements should be made in Crozet that
benefit Route 240.

Fontaine Avenue
– The prior reference to the recommendations of the Fontaine Avenue Task Force
have been deleted and replaced with the Southern Urban Area B Study
recommendations. The Southern Urban Area B Study was completed in August 2004.
The recommendations of this Study are consistent with City recommendation for
Fontaine Avenue.

Route 20-
The Town of Scottsville will be making a request to the Commonwealth
Transportation Board to improve the intersection of Route 20 with Warren
Street and Hardware Street. The Town has also requested that the County
provide its support for these improvements. This project was originally
planned for development by VDOT in the 1970’s, but the improvements were never
completed. Improvements within the Town are not required to be part of the
County’s priority list of projects and the Town has an equal opportunity to
make requests to the CTB for roads improvements as any other locality.
In this draft, staff has added a statement that recognizes the Town’s desire
for this improvement, but has not prioritized it relative to other County
projects. Adding this note is intended to identify the improvement request
for reference/information purposes and is not intended to
prioritize the project relative to other County projects.

In addition to the normal
narrative description of the County’s project priorities (Attachment A), staff
has included a more abbreviated list of County priorities (Attachment B). This
new list is intended to provide a more user friendly “quick reference” of the
County priority projects.

BUDGET IMPACT:

The County is providing its
priorities for projects to be funded through the State’s interstate, primary and
urban system funding. The impact on the budget will be determined after VDOT has
identified the projects it will fund in their Six Year Financial Plan.

Staff recommends that the
Board of Supervisors approve the attached recommended priorities for primary
road system improvements.

The Board will also need to
decide how to handle this year’s presentation at the State’s public hearing. In
the past, the Board has sent a representative to the public hearing to make a
presentation of the County’s requests. Last year, due to time constraints,
staff made this presentation.